VOWS

VOWS; Ashley Tuttle, Charles Askegard

By Lois Smith Brady

Published: June 27, 1993

ASHLEY TUTTLE, 22, a soloist with the American Ballet Theater, catches your eye even while dancing in a crowd. She is as athletic as a gymnast and so ethereal she seems to be made of little more than air and tulle.

Charles Askegard, 24, is also a Ballet Theater soloist. He is known as Chuck and, at 6 feet 4 inches tall, looks more like a basketball player than someone adept at jetes and pirouettes.

Other members of the company describe them both as dancers who could become stars, with large crowds waiting for them outside the stage door.

"Ashley is one of the real up-and-coming special talents," said Lucette Katerndahl, a Ballet Theater dancer who was a bridesmaid at their wedding, on June 16. "We call Chuck the Prince. To us, Chuck has always been the nicest, tallest, most fantastic partner. No one worries if you have Chuck holding you up."

The couple made many of their wedding plans from a pay phone inside Lincoln Center, in between the nearly nonstop end-of-the-year rehearsals and performances. (Ballet Theater's season closed June 12.) Even the bride's shower took place during a short break from dancing. "The last day of the season, we had a shower for Ashley between shows in the women's lounge," Ms. Katerndahl said. "About 35 people came, and I never saw so much lingerie in my life. Dancers don't give cookbooks."

They were married a few blocks from Lincoln Center, at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on Central Park West at 65th Street. Of the 130 guests, most were fellow dancers and beautiful to watch, even offstage: tall, willowy women in sleeveless flowered dresses, their arms as long and thin as calla lilies, and men in perfectly fitting jeans who stood in the turnout position in their cowboy boots.

Afterward, everyone walked to the Dairy in Central Park, a Gothic stone building with an attached wooden loggia made of ornately carved Victorian rafters, columns and railings.

Even the flower arrangements there evoked the ballet -- huge baskets of hydrangeas, red lilies, purple roses and pink peonies hung from the rafters. They were designed by a former dancer, Paul Bott, of Paul Bott Beautiful Flowers in Manhattan, and were based on the colors in the ballet "Coppelia."

Like many other guests, Benjamin Pierce moved to Manhattan to study dance when he was barely a teen-ager. As it turned out, Mr. Pierce's first roommate was Mr. Askegard.

"When I moved in with him, I didn't know the first thing about living on my own," Mr. Pierce said. "He taught me how to roast a chicken, how to put spices in tomato sauce, which subway to take. Judging from that, I'd have to say he'll take care of Ashley like no one else and show her the way when she's lost."

While Sam Kimball's Trans City Band played, dinner was served by the Movable Feast, a catering company based in Brooklyn. The couple moved from table to table so gracefully it appeared they were wearing motorized shoes.

David Richardson, a ballet master at Ballet Theater who was a guest, commented: "Technique alone is wonderful, but you're not going to be a dancer audiences are drawn to unless you're willing to give up your soul, and your soul has to be interesting. You want to have a conversation with that dancer on the stage. Ashley and Chuck embody that quality, and that's why it's so exciting to see them as a married couple."

Photos of the wedding at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, June 16. (Photographs by Edward Keating/The New York Times)